History Doesn’t Repeat Itself?

Donald Trump has recently acknowledged that his anti-immigrant rhetoric is being compared to Hitler’s — and then he showed how little that bothered him, repeating much of the same vile language. “They’re destroying the blood of our country. That’s what they’re doing” he said about immigrants.

What’s tragic are the vast numbers of Trump followers who stir echoes of the same blind enthusiasm that Germany showered on Hitler in 1933, who rose to become dictator of Germany. And anyone who even mildly recalls WWII history will attest to what eventually became of Germany.

As a UCSB graduate of history and someone who has extensive knowledge of WWII, I can assure you that what we’re seeing from Trump and his GOP minions is closer to a mirror image of Hitler’s Germany than at any other time in America’s history.

You think not? Well it doesn’t take much effort to find recent Trump rhetoric that echoes incendiary comparisons to Hitler, and one needs look no further than the recent Iowa caucus during a few of Trump’s speeches.

How were Hitler and the Nazis possible? How did such odious characters take and hold power in a country that was a world pacesetter in literature, art, architecture, and science? Hitler, always the mesmerizing public speaker, called for a new German order to replace what he saw as an incompetent and inefficient democratic regime. Hitler blamed the Weimar Republic’s weakness on the influence of Germany’s Jewish and communist minorities, who he claimed were trying to take over the country. Sound familiar?

Hitler then began dismantling Germany’s democratic institutions and imprisoning his chief opponents. One of Hitler’s main concepts was radical supremacy. Again, sound familiar?

It’s ironic that Trump’s very survival rests on whether he ends up in either the White House again or a prison cell. Two extremes that Hitler also experienced.